Six propositions from Bracha Ettinger on the nature of the matrixial borderspace (p.84):

1. "In the matrixial stratum of subjectivization subjectivity is an encounter. Partial-subjects co-emerge and co-fade through retuning and transformations via external/internal borderlinks with-in and with-out."

2. "A trembling, volatile experience of differentiation-in-co-emergence treading on the heals of fluctuations in distance-in-proximity accompanied by a minimal and diffuse matrixial affect is primary and prenatal, and is shaped and transformed by feminine trauma and phantasy linked to female bodily specificity on the level of the Real."

3. "A metramorphosis is multidirectional; it does not grow out of processes belonging to symbiotic fusion or autism, but grows parallel to them."

4. "The matrixial stratum of subjectivization with its co-emerging I and unknown non-I exists side by side with the phallic stratum and its emerging-self (either separate or fused) versus the world/the Other."

5. "In the prenatal phase, the matrixial stratum is more active in the process of subjectivizing than the phallic stratum, whereas in the postnatal life it is the phallic stratum that dominates while the matrixial one recedes. Thus, the matrixial objet a is not a derivation of the phallic objet a, neither is it its 'opposite.' Rather, it has an autonomous source in feminine difference. It either precedes (probably) or co-exists with the phallic objet a."

6. "After birth, when the partners of the originary matrix are no longer as unknown to one another as they were before, the relations-without-relating are partly transformed and set on a matrixial 'track.' They are also partly transformed into moments of relating and moments of nonrelating, joining in that way the phallic track of fusion/rejection. Such phallic instances, which also existed in the prenatal state alongside matrixial instances, are gradually reinforced by postnatal and then post-Oedipal experience."

The moving body finds itself bound in a relational tango, to borrow the abstract diagram of intersubjective micropolitics suggested by Erin Manning. Or, already being several, it finds itself in a series of moebius part-dances with other individuals that attempt not to cross footsteps: as one body releases from the other in tango, given the space from which it may choose to return (anxiety), a differential space is opened in which other part-dances and their relational fibres may intersect or form knots and entanglements.

The body thus finds itself in dances of relation, yes, but also in separate dances of disentanglement — the unweaving of knotty potentials and their somatic consequences (summer 2009).

our proximity also implies that thresholds of opacity may offer cover to another, if only partial. what is the ratio of exposure for a couple-pairing: is it asymmetrical? (one hopes not overly so. or overtly so?) what if the group is a threesome or a several: how do the ratios of exposure, transparency+opacity modulate in such events? when considering proximity in this sense, err in the analysis towards the temporal rather than the spatial: virilio reminds us that exposure is a time-based phenomenon, and thus thresholds of opacity may often be spatially-displaced, yet proximate (sept. 2010).

(a delayed response to after atalanta: no, i wouldn't just say fuck all identity politics, though perhaps we should?)

(thoughts on opacity thresholds as heterochronias and borderlinking phenomena)

"The matrixial impossibility of not-sharing with the other is profoundly fragilizing; it demands its price, but also gives rise to its own beauty. Apart from the time-space of art, male subjects are more radically split from this archaic site of virtuality and potentiality, since their link with it stays on the archaic outside, which is a too-early that is forever too-late for accessing in the Real the separate body of the individual as a whole subject. Men, however, enter in contact with the matrixial time and site through transference relations and via art, when they are affected, like women, by joining-in-difference with others. As an artistic filter, the matrixial apparatus serves whoever can yield and tolerate this fragile, fragmented, and dispersed mode of co-becoming. The various nonconscious pathways that are opened to and from the originary matrixial difference linked to femaleness are thus not limited to women only. This difference does, however, carry a special resonance for women because the matrixial nonconscious pathways accumulate, filter, and echo their bodily vibrations and experiences."

"patchwork, for its part, may display equivalents to themes, symmetries, and resonance that approximate it to embroidery. but the fact remains that its space is not at all constituted in the same way: there is no center; its basic motif ('block') is composed of a single element; the recurrence of this element frees uniquely rhythmic values distinct from the harmonies of embroidery" (d+g, atp, 476). the cut must be complemented by the crossfade. "in the electric age we wear all mankind as our skins" (mcluhan, understanding media). this is my politics of touch.
i hope you like it. "whether from the point of view of structure or that of development, the Voice as a psychic element can only be accounted for in relation to an entirely different psychic sphere. when the matrixial cavity of passage becomes a matrixial acoustic-resonance camera obscura, partial-objects and partial-subjects are not separated by a cut but are rather borderlinked by frequencies, waves, resonance, and vibrations. they share and are shared by the same vibrating and resonating environment, where the inside is outside and the outside inside" (ettinger, matrixial borderspace, 186). the "closer" the skin of spectacle is to the animal body proper, the more virile the transmission. "the borderline between I and non-I as co-poietic poles of the same vibrating string are transformed into a threshold and transgressed. instead of the objet a of the Voice, I therefore suggest speaking of a metramorphic link a — a matrixial voice. even more effectively than the Gaze, the Voice as a matrixial erotic antenna for psychic emission and reception testifies to the metramorphic processes of transformation in unconscious shared cavity. the psychic voice-link opens in us a matrixial time-and-space of encounter where, like in a resonance-cavity, inside and outside vibrate together" (ettinger, matrixial borderspace, 186). "it is as though a smooth space emanated, sprang from a striated space, but not without a correlation between the two, a recapitulation of one in the other, a furtherance of one through the other. yet the complex difference persists. patchwork, in conformity with migration, whose degree of affinity with nomadism it shares, is not only named after trajectories, but 'represents' trajectories, becomes inseparable from speed or movement in an open space" (d+g, atp, 526).capital needs to insinuate itself into every conversation so that the singular body may be more fully laid bare for corporate invasion. "the matrixial resonance camera obscura where metramorphic event-encounters take place locates the inside as a shareable space-and-time and the outside as in-corporated-without-fusion" (ettinger, matrixial borderspace, 186).